


38.6 Degrees Celsius

by DemiPalladium



Series: Sounds of London [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hybrids, Alternate Universe - Sherlock Holmes & John Watson Meet Differently, Bedsharing, Cat Sherlock, Catlock, Cuddles, First Kiss, Fluff, M/M, Not Beta'd, Not Brit Picked, Purring, Synesthesia, Synesthete!John, bit of a sickfic in the middle, hiatustory may prompt, my mind is melting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-11-03 14:31:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10969176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DemiPalladium/pseuds/DemiPalladium
Summary: Thirty-eight-point-six degrees Celsius is the average body temperature of the domesticated cat. John has one.For Hiatustory's May prompt: bed sharing! Go check them out on tumblr!





	38.6 Degrees Celsius

**Author's Note:**

> it'S FINALS TOMORROW MY MIND IS SCREAMING, I'LL EDIT THIS LATER

There were a few things John was not expecting when he moved in with Sherlock. He understood, basically, that as his roommate was half-cat, he'd be a bit different from a regular flat share. For example, the tendency to perch on chairs instead of sitting on them was par for the course, as were his odd hours of disappearance. The odd light-coloured purr and chitter when the genius was in his Mind Palace wasn't all strange, and John heartily welcomed anything that could fill up the ( _hateful, grey, drab_ ) background noise of London.

This, he reflected as he entered the flat after being released from the florist early, wasn't what he expected at all.

As John opened the door to the living room of 221B, his eyes caught sight of an innocent extension cord and he traced its snaking form to the object it was powering, holding his breath and hoping that the flat wasn't damaged...again.

It was powering a heating pad on the couch.

Sherlock, in his mostly-human form, draped in his belstaff and a rich suit and all his limbs folded neatly under him, was purring out a thick vibrato of pastel orange into the air like the roaring seashore at sunset ( _John could almost taste it_ ). His tail was lain flat behind him, and a distinct expression of relaxation and contentment was a haphazard curtain on his face.

Any words lain in his mouth died colourless on his tongue and dropped to the floor, along with his bag from Tesco.

Sherlock’s ears swiveled acutely towards the sharp magenta noise, and his head snapped around in pursuit to give John an icepick glare.

Silence ( _grey like the sky_ ).

“Hello John,” the Half shifted his weight and relaxed his long tail, tucking it into his coat. “I wasn’t expecting you back until later.”

“Yeah,” the word hiccuped in John's throat. “The, ah, the florist’s released me early today.”

“I see.” His limbs unfolding like a paper airplane, he maneuvered himself into sitting upright as John broke his gaze to rearrange what he'd dropped.

Stiffly, the doctor-turned-florist carried the groceries back to the kitchen.

 _Now, what can I get rid of in here..._ he opened the fridge to find it stuffed full with random experiments as usual.

 _Is this ear...pickling?_ John examined a glass jar in the fridge with a critical eye.

“Body heat.”

John startled, slamming the fridge door with a cyan smack and whipping around.

“What?” ( _How can he move so silently?!_ )

“I am half cat,” Sherlock, barefooted and tail lashing, poked a hand behind John to reach for the fridge.

John dodged out of the way of the hand, unwilling to get in the way of “scientific inquiry” and ruin another shirt.

“Yeah, so?”

“The average house cat must maintain a body temperature of 38.6 degrees Celsius to remain functional.” He extracted the jar of pickling ear and closed the door to the fridge with a yellow bump ( _like those daffodils a customer picked up, light and airy_ ).

John's gaze traced him as he put on a pair of gloves and set the jar down on the kitchen table.

“And, although you may find room temperature rather comfortable, to me the flat--and most places--are rather chilly.” The Half sat down at his microscope and affixed his deerstalker on his head.

“Is that why you wear your coat everywhere?” _Shit, didn't mean to say that out loud_.

“Yes. A warm body temperature is a vestigial adaptation from my prrrrrrrrr--” he cleared his throat like a hiccup of rain ( _that's adorable_ ), “primitive ancestry in the desert and does little for me in modern London, but as much as I would like to, I cannot change my basic biology. And, without a proper fur coat even as a cat, I must resort to other methods of containing heat.”

An old gaslight flickered, wavering tentatively. John did remember learning about different base body temperatures in Halves back at Bart’s, but his uni days were far behind him. _Wait…_

“What do you mean you're lacking a full coat?”

But Sherlock, fiddling with the lime-green-squeaking fine adjustment knob like a nervous squirrel, had already gone too far into his mind to hear him.

\------

“Sherlock? What are you doing?”

“I am trying to solve the case.”

“No, you’re going to come over here and have dinner.”

“But--”

“No. Your body is not simply “transport” and it does not help you think.”

“I don’t eat while I’m on a case--”

“You haven’t eaten in two days. If you sit down and rest, you could rest your mind enough to help you solve it faster.”

“...But--”

“Food. Here. _Now_.”

“Ugh...fine…”

“Good.”

“...At least put something else on.”

“Nope. Sean Connery is an amazing actor.”

It wasn’t until halfway through the movie that John realized he had become Sherlock’s foot warmers ( _his toes were dug under his thighs_ ). He didn’t mind.

\------

After this event, John saw the heating pad more frequently as the earth tilted away from the sun to descend London and its temperatures into winter. It stayed, for the most part, in Sherlock’s room, but it poked out into the living room if John wasn't around. He never caught the Half purring rich chocolate on it again, though he did find Sherlock purring on something else: _him_.

The fateful day began with waking up to a sore throat and an aching leg--his good leg this time, it was how he knew something was wrong--and it ended with a full-blown chase down an alley and a gash up his arm.

When they stumbled through the doorway to 221B, John cursed vibrantly and ripped off his ruined jacket.

“Bloody…” he swore, staring at the long gash on his arm. He wasn't sure how he got it, but now that it was there it hurt like the Dickens, and on top of the definitive beginnings of a flu, he was _miserable_.

John stumbled as he chucked off his shoes, about to trip and smash his nose to top off his horrid day, when Sherlock caught his arm and yanked him up.

“Cm’along John,” the Half’s curls were wild atop his head with his deerstalker lost in a demanding chase.

The only thought to sludge through the quagmire that his mind was filling with as he was dragged to the bathroom like a predator’s kill was how, even after all this time, he still hadn’t seen Sherlock’s cat form.

Truthfully, he couldn’t recall much of the rest of the events that transpired that night--his brain and body, taxed overtime with an oncoming flu ( _doctor immunity must be wearing off…_ ) and a serious wound, had diverted most of its concentration away from memory compilation and towards healing himself. The little that did settle down in the swampy depths of his fevered mind were snippets of tactile sensations--his arm hurt like fire for a long time and at some point pills and water had been coaxed down his throat by an opulent, deluxe creme-brulee-voice, and then there was darkness.

When he awoke, there was pain. A sullen ache, reverberating throughout his body, playing a harmony with the voice that sent more pills and water and food down his oesophagus, smoothed down the pain that spiked up, thorny, with each swallow.

It counterpointed with crescendos of cold and diminuendos of hot, even when his skin and bones creaked in protest. 

It stayed, close through shiver and sweat from his body's festering protests against the infection. 

It stayed when the silence sounded too navy and everything was colored like it was being filtered through 3D glasses. 

Even as the fever dreams clouded his reality and coerced his mind into irrational beliefs ( _there was a rack of weapons on the air in front of him and if he just kicked away the bad blankets on his bed he'd be able to reach the cure_ ), it stayed.

“Hmmph,” he groaned, voice creaking like an old ship in the frail light threaded into the room. His thoughts shook themselves free from the fever’s sickly grasp.

( _There's something...on my stomach. And...is it vibrating?_ )

“Unf,” he grunted as he tried to shift his hips, get away from whatever was holding him down. He was pinned, an insect in one of those...insect-holding-things.

( _Maybe...don't think I'm...one hundred percent yet._ )

Well, whatever it was, at least it was warm. All the covers were gone.

One of his hands crept out, slowly, like a vine towards the thing without his permission, trailing the side of his body.

_Come back, what are you--_

His hand made contact.

 _Soft, oh_ , helpfully counteracted his mind. The sensation of tender peach fuzz loped up his arm, encouraging him to keep stroking.

The thing was vibrating harder now. He hoped it wasn't malicious, like some sort of furry...vibrating...touch-intensified bomb or something.

It took him a second to realize how little sense that thought made...but the thing felt like downy fluff under his fingers and hadn't killed him yet, so it was probably mostly benevolent.

With another easy stroke across the velveteen…thing, his fingers sunk into an ocean of silken seaweed and stayed there, shifting gently with its currents.

( _The chocolate droning poured into his ears like bees in a hive escaping from rain--_ )

Sherlock.

He was petting Sherlock.

Realization crashed into him abruptly. John startled, jolting awake. 

“MRRRRRAH!” A navy screech assaulted him. He'd kicked Sherlock off him.

_Great._

\------

“Sherlock, why was I in your room?” It was, what John thought, an honest question.

The man in question was crumpled up on his chair, about to engage in a major sulk.

“Because my room is closer to the restroom, John.” He ground out, bitter green. 

Before John could interrupt, Sherlock shot at him again.

“If you may recall, you weren't lucid enough to make it on your own, and any doctor would say that leaving a delirious-from-fever patient to their own devices is unadvisable.”

“Why didn't you give me any fever reducers, then?”

“I did.” Sherlock pointedly avoided his gaze, one ear pressed flush to his skull. “Your fever wouldn't go down below 37.9 degrees.”

“That's…that's _bad_ news. Why wasn't I sent to a hospital?”

“And leave you in the care of the _incompetents_ you call your medical peers? Never.” There was an undercurrent of fear below his haughty voice, lingering like a colour stain on a dirty paintbrush.

“Whatever you may believe, they're not incompetent. I would have been fine--”

“You would have been subject to cruel and unusual punishment from an overworked and underpaid staff. And the horrid food they serve.”

“Sherlock--”

“And you are fine now, so I fail to see the cause for your concern--”

“Sherlock,” John forced out, staring at Sherlock, “I was stuck in here for-for God knows how long with a fever of an unknown origin. If--when--there’s almost an infinite number of things that could have gone wrong, Sherlock! I think you’d rather me be in a hospital and alive than at home and **dead**!”

He withdrew a shaky breath, noticing that his hands now rested on the table and he’d pushed himself half upright.

Sherlock curled into himself more.

Maybe he'd gone too far.

“Okay,” John said, mostly to himself, “okay. It's over now, and well--you're right,” his voice smudged with reluctance, “there's nothing we can do about it now. But please, the next time something like this happens, it really is best for me to be checked into a hospital.”

The sound of an ambulance outside the window punctuated the silence like an orange stapler.

He let a sigh drift out of mouth, and decided to see if they had any food. His stomach growled.

“I was scared.”

John nearly ran into the couch.

“Excuse me?”

“I will not repeat myself. You heard me perfectly.”

“Sher--”

“And besides,” he barreled on like cream soda, “cat purring has been proven to be therapeutic and can help heal illness and injury. If I had checked you into an A&E, you would have been out of commission for longer than necessary.”

Sherlock didn't fool him for a second.

\------

John Watson liked snow. Really, he did.

He understood the beauty of the white fluff that fell from the heavens during the winter months, understood that it heralded the return of the holiday season and encountered several pretty photographs of the stuff in the past.

But that was just how he liked it...in photographs, looking pretty and glistening, lining leafless trees and accompanied by wild animals.

In real life, the snow he saw ( _especially in the city_ ) was much less beautiful and much more of a nuisance. Aside from destroying reasonable travel times, it had a tendency to just…

... **mute** all the sounds around him. Everything became a dampened, dripping pastel version of its normal colour. During the winter, he often felt that he stumbled about half-blind like a newborn foal.

He also liked it when the snow stayed outside the flat, he glumly reflected as he opened the door to find the flat almost as cold as it was on the streets.

There was a pile of blankets and pillows stacked high on the couch.

“Ah, John,” greeted Sherlock’s distinctive cream voice. It took him a second to realize that Sherlock was speaking from inside the pile. “It is imperative that you put on the fireplace.”

John took one breath in and let one breath out.

“Please tell me you didn’t sacrifice the heating for a science experiment.”

A fuzzy head of curls, unobscured by a deerstalker, poked up out of the pile like a curious mole. Sherlock’s ears twitched.

( _Why can I still remember what those felt like…?_ )

“Of course not,” the muffled cream words carried a vague air of conceited innocence, “the power to Baker Street and its neighbors has been cut off by all this ice.”

 _Likely story_ , John thought to himself in response. He looked over the check he received from the florist’s, then went to turn on the kettle in the kitchen.

He flicked it on once, letting the blue sound (finally something sounding like it should) suffuse the air.

Twice.

Three times the kettle’s switch cracked turquoise...and it still did nothing.

John cast a long glance around the flat’s noon-decorated surfaces. None of the lights were on, none of the electronics were on, the TV wasn’t on, and upon inspection, his laptop wasn’t charging either.

( _Well, this is great._ )

“Fine, fine,” he groused to Sherlock, whose head was now fully above the patchwork cloud he had made.

John watched Sherlock’s ears twitch and his multifaceted eyes disect him apart piece by piece as he hefted the logs into the fireplace, crashing down with a satisfying caramel lurch.

He could feel the Half’s stare on his back when he crouched down to light the fire, striking a cerulean match and bringing it to the tinder below the logs. _Didn't think I’d have to do this again_.

With the tinder all aflame and the bigger logs encouraging the fire’s swift spread into larger, orchid-crackling leaps, heat flushed through his body like a flood and John could finally take off his coat.

It would take a while for it to warm up all of the flat, so the ex-doctor decided, with a satisfied grunt as he hung his coat on the coat rack ( _never thought that would feel so good_ ) to try and write up some more on his stories. He still had 50k words to work through before next December, unless Sherlock suddenly decided that he would let more of their adventures be published.

His laptop, although now lacking access to the internet thanks to the ice, could still access his offline files, and if it ran out of charge, he could always write in a journal to edit and type up later. The only thing he regretted was not having access to his editor’s latest e-mail.

Picking up the computer, the blond man opened it up to start working on his stories.

“What are you doing,” rose a cream voice above the icy blue key clacks.

“Writing. I do actually have a _job_ , you know,” he scoffed back.

“Why are you doing it in your chair?”

John froze and cast an incredulous gaze at the Half, who was boring holes into his computer.

“Well, my room is too cold, I don’t want to sit in the kitchen, the floor is rather uncomfortable, and you’re taking up the entire couch,” he asserted, rolling his eyes. “Now, I need to concentrate on writing, please.”

Trying to search for the train of thought he’d lost when he last left off (before that case with the cleaver and the flower pots), the writer was doing his best to focus when he felt something poke him once, and then when he ignored its silvery rustling, twice, and then again and again.

John huffed as his sleeve was tugged ( _“Consulting Detective”? More like “consulting twelve-year-old”, I swear,_ ) and let his gaze be wrenched asunder from his computer screen.

“John,” Sherlock implored, staring at him with his chin resting on one arm of the couch and having scrunched the piles of pillows and blankets onto one side. What hyperspace he always managed to squeeze six feet of bony limbs into, the doctor would never know. 

“John, I’m cold. Come here.”

 _Should have seen that one coming_ , “No.”

“Why not?”

“I’m busy.”

“But since I require more heat than you, the fire is failing to fulfill that need in a timely manner, and since my heating pad is inoperable, it only seems logical that you should come to sit by me so that we mutually benefit,” the 28-year-old-going-on-twelve huffed out, cocoa.

Rolling his eyes at the Half’s antics, John did something on instinct that he would come to never regret.

Without thinking, John leaned over and kissed Sherlock’s brow, planting solid a gentle peck almost square on his pouting forehead. 

“There, that’ll keep you warm,” he muttered, nonchalant and consciously unaware of what his body just did. John turned his attention back to his computer and poked at a few keys.

The silence that followed smacked him in the face and made him realize what he’d just done.

His fingers ghosted over his lips and his pupils blew open.

“Wait--did I just--” he stuttered, shuttering like an old camera and turning his head to stare at Sherlock once more.

Sherlock’s snowy skin was flushed a deep beet red and his crystalline eyes were staring, dumbfounded and nearing reverent, at the place where John’s lips had touched his forehead as if it now held the answers to all the questions the part-cat had ever wanted to know. His ears were partly curled backwards and partly alert.

“John Watson,” the name escaped his flatmate’s mouth with an aqua flourish, “did you just kiss _me_?”

“Yeah, I guess I did,” John mused, still shocked from his own decision and feeling his fingers drag over his lips.

“Am I correct in deducing from that kiss...that you are in love with me?” The black tail behind Sherlock started quivering in excitement.

( _No use in denying it,_ ) “Yeah, I guess I am.”

“And from the fact that you are in love with me, am I correct in saying that you would not be opposed to continued and, indeed, increased bodily contact?”

( _That’s a weird turn of phrase._ ) “...Yes,” the word picked its way down the cliff face of the blond’s tongue.

Sherlock’s smile brightened from awed and reverent to nearly supernova-level radiance, and before John had the chance to react his laptop was shut with a gunmetal grey click and he was being shoved into Sherlock’s room and dumped on his luxurious comforter.

A pile of limbs, blankets, and pillows settled on his chest swiftly following his laying back on the bed, and John just stared at Sherlock as the latter started purring on him.

“Sherlock, what--what are we doing?”

“I assumed that from your admittances earlier you would not be opposed to an impromptu case study of body-to-body heat transferral.” Rainbow eyes, deeper than anything John had ever seen before, implored him to stay.

John quirked an eyebrow. ( _“Impromptu study of body-to-body heat transferral” just sounds like a fancy term for “cuddling” to me._ ) “Fine, as long as this isn’t strictly scientific.”

“As long as you don't kick me off the bed again. Rest assured that my feelings echo the sentiments you expressed earlier,” the Half gave the hand resting on John’s chest a friendly “pet me!” headbutt.

“You love me?”

“Yes, I do.”

**Author's Note:**

> *stares at reviews* studying wavelengths hertz *passes out like a dead fish*
> 
> FORGOT TO MENTION: 38.6 C is about 101.5 Fahrenheit. Also, I'm like 80% sure that I'm basing Sherlock's cat counterpart off of either the Devon or Cornwall Rex, two of four officially-recognized curly-furred cat breeds. They, actually, don't *really* have curly fur. Cat fur comes in three layers: the guard layer, then the down layer, and then the awn layer. Devon rexes are missing the guard hair layer and Cornwall rexes only have awn, so that's what Sherlock means when he says he doesn't have a full coat.
> 
> Edit: Holy mother of fanfics, inserting all the italics on ao3 manually is a PAIN


End file.
